THAT DAY, ON THE BEACH

Director: Edward Yang. 166 minutes. Taiwan. 1983. Languages:  Hokkien, Mandarin, German and English. Colour. 2K restoration

The film will be introduced by film producer Chuti Chang.

Screening as part of the Edward Yang Season presented with the support of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute, the Taipei Representative Office in Ireland.

And a very special thanks to Janus Films and NG Yuk Lin.

All Edward Yang Season’s film notes are taken from the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute, the Film Lincoln Centre and Janus Films.

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One of the greatest debuts of the 20th Century, That Day, on the Beach, the first feature for both Yang and cinematographer Christopher Doyle, stars Sylvia Chang and Terry Wu as old friends reuniting after thirteen years apart. “There’s a mystery,” noted David Bordwell in 2016, “but, as in L’Avventura, the disappearance sends out ripples that reveal social pressures and psychological states. There are flashbacks, both fragmentary and extended; there are flashbacks within flashbacks; there are multiple narrators, replays of key events, and floating voice-overs—all in the service of probing the ways in which patriarchal authority stunts young people’s lives”.